A product marketing manager had done comprehensive market research and competition research.
In parallel, the CTO partnered with the design head to do discovery—and the user research was speaking to the customers.
At the end, they were doing mapping, the intersections, convergence, directions, system mapping. Of course access to Miro, Figjam, and Kumu always help—tools often give us a false sense of assurance.
None of the teams took the terminology seriously—the research insights were still in the domain language or market language.
They did not know whether the customers submit a vote, or they just vote.
They were not sure whether the customers join a survey, or participate in a survey, or respond to a survey.
They did not try to understand whether the customers see the survey results, or survey voting results, or the voting results.
While designing the journey, the customer success was all over the place because they totally missed the customers’ natural language—the language trees, or content maps, or the product voice in the customers’ language.
The customer moments were well designed because the team had the evidence but the customers often had questions—the support tickets saw the rise.
The team did a design audit, and the product analysis—something was not right.
Guess what could have saved them?
Content design or product content strategy. (Inspired by my LinkedIn post earlier today.)
